Picking Up The Pieces
by ShadowMayne
Summary: And with fingers torn and bloody he had collected the tiny shards of his happiness and held them together. - The story of Dean spanning up to mid-season 6  spoilers! . One-shot. Emotional/angsty.


- Picking up the Pieces -

"_Life is what happened when all the what-ifs didn't. __When what you dreamed or hoped or feared might come to pass, passed instead." – Jodi Picoult, author.  
_

Every family has their faults. Faults are part of what makes a family a family. Modern families these days aren't always what they say they are. We spend too much time working, or in front of the computer. We don't look up at each other and laugh. Sometimes those loving moments are too fleeting. It's not hard to imagine living in the same house as someone and not really knowing them.

Sometimes it's easier to pretend things are fine, than to know that they aren't.

And yet, blood is still thicker than water.

Blood is what defines us; it's what binds us together.

Family, whatever it means, sometimes means the most. It's in the colour of our eyes, or the way we talk. It's in the things you say and the stupid little traditions you have. It's instinctive.

You don't need to be able to define family to know what it is. It's just intuitive. It's family. You've known your whole life what family means…if only you could just find the words for it.

Dean isn't sure what family is, or what it's meant to be sometimes, but he does know one thing.

Family, this family, was worth dying for. It was worth fighting for. It was worth anything.

His family, however small and dysfunctional, was everything.

The problem is, when you make something your everything, and they leave? Well then, you're left with nothing.

And nothing seems so far away when you have everything, but it's just a misstep away. Slip up, and suddenly that crushing nothingness is everywhere.

What do you have when you have lost it? Memories?

How does it feel to be left in that nothingness? That encasing darkness?

How do you find your way back to the light? How do accept that the most beautiful moment in your life was just that? A tiny, little fleeting moment….surrounded by the bounds of eternity.

When Sammy left, Dean thought he couldn't survive. It was like being broken. It was a tight squeezing around his chest, these horrid fingers of nausea clawing at his neck, that strange light-headedness only he could feel.

But it worse than that too. It was like the rest of his life had been pretending, it was doubt. It was hating that stupid reflection in the mirror.

It was wishing he was good enough to deserve a family.

It was selfish, it was selfless. It was confused and distorted and vague and crushing.

But it wasn't over.

Because Dean had his father, his drill sergeant, and slowly, oh-so slowly he found the pieces of his broken life.

And with fingers torn and bloody he had collected the tiny shards of his happiness and held them together. They fell from shaking fingers when he didn't concentrate, they didn't fit together quite right.

It was so frustrating, but with the grace of a drunkard he would scoop them up and start again, and again in the silence of a motel room far from hope.

In the dark, alone, he would start to rebuild. Over and over again.

He kept wondering how long it would be before the broken pieces would stay broken, before he would lose one or two.

His smile didn't reach his eyes, and everyone saw it, but there was nothing more to say. There are some fights you have to take for yourself. Sometimes the burden won't get lighter no matter how many people try to hold it.

Dean wouldn't know, he was the only one who knew. Because pretending really was easier than trying to talk. Trying to talk to his father, trying to talk to his friends.

He carried those broken pieces with him everywhere, beside the aching wound where they had once rested.

And as the days went on it became a little easier to hold them together.

And as the weeks went on it became a little less painful, and his fingers felt a little less numb.

And as the months slipped by it became a little less hopeless.

And as the years drew to a close it became a little more like before.

Yes, the scars were still there, but they were soon hidden under others.

Yes, that dull aching never really went away.

It took almost four years, but Dean learned how to breathe again.

Then one day, something took his breath away.

And he was drowning without water. His fingers were numb and shaking and those stupid little shards of glassy hope fell back to the ground.

The pieces were so much smaller now. He couldn't bring himself to try and find them.

He turned from motel room that he was meant to meet his father in.

Alone, he wondered what he'd done to be abandoned again.

On autopilot he moved, stiff and sore. It didn't even hurt, to leave those little shards of his old life on the floor, scattered by the force of their destruction.

Now he was useless to even his father.

Emptiness, encasing him, folding around him. For a moment it was almost comforting.

He faltered at the edge for a minute.

They say you don't know how strong you are until you need to be strong.

His strength surprised him, though it shouldn't have. He had faced the hopelessness of his worst fear and he would survive.

So what if he wasn't needed? He yelled into the howling wind.

Dean Winchester will not break from this. Not now. Not ever.

He looked at those shards one last time, their glittering beauty enchanted him for a moment and he so wanted to slip back to the pretending, to holding them in his hands. To believing the past could be his future.

But he shook himself, gathered what he owed and left them lying there.

Memories? He'd carry them forever, but he wouldn't let his skin break with their pressure.

He went to the one place he'd felt whole.

Desperate, no idea what he was expecting.

He hit the gas and ran from the past.

He ran to his little brother, to the apple pie life of Sammy in Stanford, and when he slid through the doorway it was like coming home. Home to his family.

But it wasn't until later, it wasn't until he dragged his little brother from the fire once again that he realised, you can't run from your past.

And somehow those silly little shards of hope and happiness nestled back into him. John came back, and for those fleeting moments he was whole.

Until suddenly he was alive and his father was gone, but the pieces weren't so bad.

And then Sammy died, but Dean could fix that too. He threw his soul away to keep the hope that Sammy would be there, than some part of his tiny family would survive.

It wasn't until Lucifer drew Sam into the depths of his cage with him that Dean found he couldn't hold those pieces anymore.

And this time, he couldn't glue them together, but he couldn't leave them behind again. That pain was all he had left of Sammy. All he had left of John.

Everyone he spoke to could see it in his eyes. Lisa would hold him when the shards drove themselves into him. Ben would pretend he didn't hear the agony it caused them.

It took a year for the sharp edges to dull, and for the perfection that was his little family slink into his consciousness.

But he really should've known better.

You can't run from the past.

It was like no time had passed. He was alone again, without his old family, without his new family.

Life was a mess, but he couldn't help from hoping…

Maybe one day the pieces would fall back together.

Because as long as you keep trying, you are not broken.

The shards can rip into you, they can break your skin, but they can't break you.

Dean knows it'll be ok in the end, if it's not ok then it's not then end.

Just hold on, he tells himself.

It hurts to hold onto hope, but you can't abandon it because it will always find you.

Yes it hurts so much, but when you see its glittering reflection on your life you can't help but wonder…maybe it is worth it in the end…

Because if he'd broken that day Sam went to college he would never have had Lisa. If he'd broken then the perfect moments between the pain might never have happened.

If he broken there would be no one to sell their soul for Sammy.

If he had broken the apocalypse would have finished.

If he had broken…

But he didn't. And wasn't that the whole point?

Life isn't all those moments that should have happened if he were a weaker man.

Life was the fact that he wasn't.

Life wasn't broken.

It was hard and it was excruciating, but it was so stupidly, wonderfully perfect.

And he wouldn't trade it for the world.

-THE END -

Please review! For stories similar to this check my profile for "Happy Birthday"; "Reflections" and "Cry".


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